Hello all,
Have had CEL come on and off intermittently over the past year. I took it to an Indie shop that said I need a new catalytic converter, which they quoted me around 2,000$. I sat on this a while. More recently,I have my emission testing coming up, so this is something I need to get taken care of. I took it to an emissions center, where they ran the code again which showed an inefficiency in oxygen sensor Bank 1(I think it was P0421). I brought it back to the same Indie shop, but they are telling me that there are two O2 sensors per bank, costing 300$ each. I asked them to please hold.
My question is how to proceed? I suppose the best thing to do would be to
Should I buy a durametric reader + a PC (I only have a mac), read the code myself and figure out what's going on and continue from there?
Should I just buy all the oxygen sensors (is it 4 or 8 total?) and some jackstands and replace them all and see what happens? I see there are some Youtube videos on it.
Should I finally just break down and take it to the
Porsche
dealership and see what they say?
Any help is appreciated. Thank you.
How many miles are on it? Pelican shows 02 sensors $45.25. If you're handy, confident and have the right socket I'd just replace them, just my opinion.
107K. Cheapest I had found was 99$. Do you have a link?
Is my understanding correct that there are four?
I've snagged a supposedly working set of 4 sensors off ebay for 60$. If that solves the CEL, then I'll end up getting brand new ones.
So you're buying them twice? Normally I'm not a fan of "replace and pray" approaches to diagnostics. However, in
Porsche
terms these parts are cheap and having new ones certainly eliminates one question mark. At 100K it could be the sensors or the Cat, again if it were me I'd start with the sensors because replacing them at that mileage isn't a bad idea anyhow, good luck!
Porsche Oxygen Sensor Bosch 16147 9A1 606 124 00 9A1.606.124.00 9A1-606-124-00 4047024816350 9A160612400 028851161473 | Pelican Parts
Is your car modified?
ECU, intake or exhaust?
Or bone stock.
I'm going thru same with o2 fault codes and MAF, but it only started after I upgraded everything.
If i drive the car like grandpa kettle, I get the soft codes (car runs perfectly) but if I drive spiritedly never a code.
I found this, but I know it will be a fight with my dealer as they are quite awful for regular warranty work, let alone old TSB's
Check light on again - Catalyst efficiency!
Chaps, any help appreciated. I have had the secondary lambda sensor replaced on one bank and have still got the check lamp coming on with Cat efficiency problems. I think I may need a new catalyst!
www.planet-9.com
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I'm absolutely certain that there are past topics on this same subject so please do some reading of those, but to sum up here is what you can do:
1) There are updated flashes from
Porsche
that in "some" instances have stopped cars from throwing CELs for catalytic convertor efficiency P430 P431 I think were the codes if memory serves correct. Whether or not
Porsche
still has these flashes available via a
PIWIS
I don't know, but at one time in the past they were available.
2) Some have tried replacing O2 sensors and/or placing a washer on the sensor to move it back out of the exhaust stream a bit and this has caused their CELs to go away. No guarantee that this is going to work, but it is something you can try.
3) In the past you could have had
Porsche
swap out your header/cat combo free of charge under the extended emissions warranty but those have long since expired so if you have
Porsche
or an independent shop do this it is going to cost you $$$ to do so.
4) You can get an ECU flash from an aftermarket provider such as Softronic that will tell the ECU to ignore the values from the secondary O2 sensors and thus it will NOT trip a CEL, plus this will also typically give you a performance boost of some kind. For those who don't want to ever modify their car this isn't an option but for those who don't care about modifying then this is certainly a viable option. Some ECU flashes can be detected by
Porsche
if you go in for service, others cannot, but given that all of these cars are outside of warranty of any kind, then having a modified ECU really shouldn't matter because there is no warranty for
Porsche
to disclaim.
In a nutshell your car contains values in a table, and the readings your sensors are showing are ending up outside of those values. The old
Porsche
flashes supposedly adjusted the values in these tables to be a little more lenient and thus an error may not be tripped, flashes from vendors like Softronic typically tell the ECU to ignore any value it sees so it doesn't matter what is in the lookup table. Swapping in a new cat/header or O2 sensor may initially provide values that fall within range, but no guarantee that it won't happen again at some point in the future.
Car is not modified at all (as far as I know or can tell).
Update: Got the 987 back today. They replaced both O2 sensors for Bank 1.
They also gave me a list of codes that were acquired prior to the O2 sensor switchout, including...
P0421: Primary Catalytic Converter, Bank 1, Inadequate Effect Below Limit Value
4444: Steering Angle Sensor Not initialized
803F Two-Tone Horn, Low Pitch
8040 Two-Tone Horn, High Pitch
Among several others...
The CEL is now off, and I will be taking the car for emissions testing soon. Fingers crossed that this fixes the issue. The car does appear to be more spry (though this could be subjectively because I've been driving a slower SUV the past few days).
Now to figure out what's going on with the horn...
Update #2: CEL came on after about 100 miles of driving. Checked the code with my OBD Scanner...code P0421. Now this time, car idles rough and actually shuts off if I just let it idle. Plan to officially call
Porsche
dealership in the morning this time. Will update.
